Hazardous wastes & substances

A Pennsylvania appellate court reversed and remanded a lower court's decision that the owner of an oil and gas company should be liable for failing to plug 47 abandoned oil and gas wells located in Erie and Crawford Counties. The state...

A Pennsylvania court affirmed a lower court order granting the Pennsylvania Department of the Environment's (PaDEP's) petition to investigate, remediate, and clean up contamination on private property under the Pennsylvania Hazardous...

The Third Circuit vacated as moot a lower court decision that dismissed a contractor's third-party complaint against Pennsylvania and the commonwealth's natural resources agency for cleanup costs associated with Quehanna Wild Area...

A district court held that residents may add four new defendants in their lawsuit against energy companies for alleged water contamination due to hydraulic fracturing operations near their homes. During the course of discovery, the...

The court reverses a district court decision that a property owner could not recover response costs under the Pennsylvania Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act (HSCA) because he failed to establish a release or threat of release of hazardous...

The court reverses an appellate state court decision that an employee of an environmental services company could not be criminally charged with violating §610(1) of the Pennsylvania Solid Waste Management Act (SWMA), which prohibits the...

The U.S. Supreme Court holds that the criminal conviction of a hazardous waste facility operator under a Pennsylvania hazardous waste statute for operating a hazardous waste facility without a permit violated the federal Due Process...

A court holds that under the Pennsylvania Hazardous Sites Clean-Up Act (HSCA), the owner of property once used for a landfill may not recover from previous owners the costs of testing the property for hazardous substances. The court...

The Court certifies to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court the question of whether it either correctly applied Pennsylvania's hazardous waste law or changed the application of the law when it held in Commonwealth v. Scarpone, 535 Pa...